Bittersweet
by Punzie the Platypus
Summary: The eight-year anniversary of his mother's death. Stiles goes to visit her grave.


_**Soli Deo gloria**_

**DISCLAIMER: I do NOT own Teen Wolf. GUESS WHO'S BACK. I can come up with the usual 'life and school were making me tired and busy!' excuse and bore you all, but that's the truth. Sometimes the truth is dead boring. But anyway. That is besides the point. The whole point of this story is to make an angst-y Stiles story that makes us cry and love him all the more. Shall we go on? :)**

**Oh, and this is written before season 2, so Isaac is still a harmless yet harmed guy in here. **

It was that one day of the year again. That one day of the year that always did and will always forever _suck_. Not that Stiles thought he could feel the day being anything but. He had come to terms with the fact that that early year date was always going to haunt him, cause a lump that was forever for that day stuck inside his throat. He knew that his hands would get sweaty and clammy and that his focus could only be on the fact that his mother was dead, and in the ground, and that she was gone from him just another year.

He did horribly in school. He could hardly care. Nope. Not at all. Because what was the point of getting one stupid test right when his _mother_ was gone?

Scott understood the day. He knew Stiles would be either horribly miserable, or unrealistically optimistic over nothing, or so quiet that he could hear actual crickets in the background. But he didn't understand the pain. Not really. He tried to empathize, but he had lost a parent due to martial problems and personality differences between his mother and father. He had anger towards his gone-parent. Stiles could only feel pain. What else was there to feel, besides the ache? The ripping breath that always filled his lungs that February day?

* * *

Stiles gulped uncomfortably at the gate to the cemetery. He was going this alone. He never did it with Scott. He knew that Stiles really, deep down, didn't want an audience.

His dad was working. He'd come after work, where he could kneel in front of the headstone, lean his arm against it, cry alone, with no son to duck his head and try not to notice his old man crying.

In his hands were a bouquet of roses. His mom's favorite. His dad would always buy as many as he could and place them in vases around her hospital room. She'd always watch with a breathless laugh, intoxicated by the gesture. He'd always kiss her on the mouth and then the forehead and then rub her other hand; the other was always being held by two other fat little eight-year-old hands.

He took a deep breath and walked forward. It was a chilly day, with the old fall leaves crunching under his sneakers. He barely noticed the cold. He was instead intent on keeping his eyes on the sidewalk that wined its way up through the cemetery to the biggest hill in Beacon Hills. Besides the ones that were home to the actual airplane beacons, of course.

Her grave was at the bottom of that hill.

It wasn't a very steep hill. It sloped, making it long and have a variety of different headstones up. There were squares and rectangles and crosses and some flat against the ground. Some carved rock with hand-crafted names and dates. Some short and some tall and all marking an ended life, the last resting place of a body devoid of any soul or feeling. It was slightly creepy, especially since it was late afternoon and therefore it was getting dark. Because winter afternoons tended to do that.

Stiles knew the way by heart, though. Sure, he wished he didn't. But it was something he couldn't rid himself of, of the way his feet moved towards his mother's grave and stood before it. He didn't see it; he took a deep breath, and felt his heart palpitate.

He sighed, closing his eyes. "Damn it," he said. His free hand curled and uncurled into a tight fist. Something fluttered inside him, hard and aching, and he shook his head, saying angrily, grinding his teeth, "Not a panic attack. No, no no no no no, not today. Any day but today."

He opened his eyes. Wiggled his fingers. Looked, resigned, to the headstone.

_Claudia Stilinski_

_1970-2004_

_Beloved Mother and Wife_

It had a lacing of flowers at the top. Roses.

"Hey, Mom," he said, mentally kicking himself, though there was no one to hear his voice crack. He inclined his head a little. "It's been a while. Sorry. I've been busy. My life's been hectic since you've been gone . . . More so than usual."

Stiles sat down. Cross-legged, he held the bouquet in his hands for a moment. The sky continued to darken. It was a Friday. Nobody was out here in the cold. No. Nobody but a boy missing his mother.

He glanced from the bouquet to the headstone, and then he leaned forward and carefully set the bouquet against the stone. He knew that there were gardeners who cleaned up the cemetery, who watered the plants around the gravestones and discarding all the dead ones. He knew two of them, old Rich and Eddie. They were nice. They always took care of the ones he put at his mom's headstone. He knew they cared. A little, anyway. It gave him a little reassurance that the flowers wouldn't die in the cemetery, however fitting it seemed to poetically be.

He didn't say much for a few minutes. He stared at the stone, his head against his up-held palm.

"Scott's a werewolf, Mom," Stiles said. He smirked. "Would you believe that? I almost didn't. No, actually. It's weird, but I thought he wasn't lying the minute he told me. There's a lot of folklore about them. It's very weird and time-consuming to read. But it's cool. You used to like fantasy things. I . . . I think you would have found it cool."

He cleared his throat. Tapped his fingers against his jeans. "School is still blargh. I went out with Lydia. We danced. She got bitten. It was a fun- and horror-filled night. Hope to never have another one like that again. She . . . she had to go to the hospital. I kinda hate hospitals." He sighed. "But you knew that."

There was a silence. The grass by the grave, however short, moved gently in the sharp wind. The leaves on the bouquet moved as well, and Stiles tried in vain not to think about the last times he had been here. He used to come here a lot. He would run away from home a lot, freaking his dad out to no end. Being a nine-year-old and running to safety, which to him was a gravestone, was a little weird. Almost resulted in him getting a therapist. He had managed, with persuading and smooth assurances to his dad, to avoid that.

He remembered how his mom would take him on walks in the park. They would go biking. They would go out and get ice cream. They would have play dates at the playground with Mrs. McCall and Scott, and the two boys sat at the highest points of the jungle gym and asked each other what they thought their mothers were talking about when they sat together on the park bench. Neither knew.

"I still remember the night you died, Mom," Stiles said slowly, not knowing if he wanted to continue down this path. He could still remember the details in his mind; the sharp smell of disinfectant, the dull color of blue of the nurses' clothes. The sound of the heart monitor. The dead, alarming beep that brought all the nurses yelling into the room, making him get shoved away from his mother, whose hand he had been holding. He had watched, so much shorter than the rest of the human population in the room, as his mother died.

He bite his tongue. He didn't like to recall memories like that. Mostly because it spiked later memories, such as those of standing by his mother's coffin, his dad's hand on his shoulder, or of the two of them sitting at the table, looking longingly at the normally filled seat. Or of the panic attacks that would overcome his body and make his dad take him on frequent trips to the emergency room.

Not the greatest part of his life.

He didn't know what else to say. She already knew. She already knew that he was still doing badly in school all the while he was a genius, that he was still failing with girls and still forever alone with Scott, who now was having a weird pseudo-relationship. She knew that he had somehow made it to the front line of his lacrosse team. That he had done well then.

He smiled to himself. "If you were here, you would have been the loudest in the stands, wouldn't you?" Of course she would have. Stiles never doubted her.

He supposed that he stuck his mom on a sort of pedestal, one so high that she was escaping all the flaws of man and made almost angelic. But in reality he knew that she snapped on occasion and had cursed so much that he had grown up with the mouth of a sailor. That had gotten him into more trouble than he could want to recall.

He sighed. "It's been a long time, Mom. Eight years. And I've missed you every damn year, and it never gets easier. Because, you know, all the other guys and girls, they all have their moms and dads. Despite how many of them are divorced, they, at least, are _alive_. Sometimes they don't even want their parents. Then . . . I find that selfish. Yeah. I do. Because they have parents they don't want and I don't have a mom. It . . . well, kinda sucks."

The air had grown chillier; the sun was setting more, casting light pink over the clouds, which were growing grayer and grayer as the moments slipped away into evening. Yet Stiles could have stayed there all night, just thinking over the past year of his life with his mom's headstone. But he knew his dad would be coming around. He'd rather not be here when he came, because seeing his dad cry was about the most horrible feeling in the world. He'd rather save himself from the pain and take off from the site as soon as he could.

So he stood up, took a deep breath and exhaled. He felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, like he did every time he remembered the funeral, and the first time he and his dad had come to see the actual headstone in place. He reached out and slammed his hand against the stone, keeping it there as he said, whispering, "See you later, Mom."

That was when he heard a loud noise.

He turned, frowning, feeling like he should, you know, run before a werewolf came out of the woods and attacked him, asking him questions while also pinning him to ground. Yeah, like he could breathe and speak while the weight of the beast put him down. Yeah. Werewolves, practically animalic in thoughts and logic when not in human-form, weren't the greatest interrogators.

But nope. That wasn't a werewolf. It was a kid Stiles immediately recognized from school. One of the guys on the lacrosse time. On a big mower. Taking care of the cemetery. And instantly he felt stupid for freaking out. This kid was harmless.

He was getting down from his mower and Stiles exhaled, saying, "Geez. You almost gave me a heart attack."

"Huh? Sorry," the guy said. He shrugged. "I didn't realize anyone else was around here."

"Yeah. I'm just glad that mower didn't trample me," Stiles said, realizing in the back of his head that he hadn't even heard its loud buzz.

"I wouldn't have let it. Believe me, I would be in trouble if I killed someone," the other guy said.

Stiles snapped his fingers to himself. "You're Isaac, right?"

The guy nodded. "Isaac Lahey."

"'Kay. Cool. You're on the lacrosse team, right?"

"Aren't you, too?"

"Yeah." Stiles shrugged. "But Coach has a personal vendetta against me. So I don't play much."

"Neither do I," Isaac said, shrugging as well.

"Yeah." Stiles cleared his throat and realized that since the guys barely were acquaintances, never mind friends, this was gonna get awkward. Fast. So he carefully, reluctantly, slid his hand off his mother's gravestone, and rubbing his hands together, said, "Well. I gotta get going. It's getting dark. Perfect time to get robbed and murdered."

Isaac wasn't looking at him. He was looking behind him. "That your mother's grave?" he asked, nodding to it.

Stiles froze. "Why do you ask?"

"She has your name," Isaac said, not mentioning that he knew what it felt like to see his mother's gravestone, and he couldn't tell what Stiles's facial expression meant. He was mad, obviously, that Isaac had pointed that out, but he was also kinda sad and pressing his lips together. Isaac pointed a thumb behind him and said, "My mother's is over there, past those trees. Four years back." He nodded, not sure what else to say, and took the mower's bag and went back to his job before he was caught dawdling.

Stiles stood still for a moment, not sure how to process this information. Suddenly he heard the mower start up again, and he remembered that his dad would be here soon. He turned back to the grey rock and sighed, putting his hands into his hoodie's pockets, "See you soon, Mom."

There was no answer back. Nothing. But he was sure she heard him.

He walked out of the cemetery, and the wind moved the leaves in the bouquet.

**Angsta-angsta-angsta. Thanks for reading!**


End file.
